Unite 2018: Everything We Announced and How it Will Simplify, Automate, and Accelerate Your Global Growth

The impact that growing globally has on your organization. In fact, the challenges and complexities of international expansion were a main topic of conversation at Unite 2018, Shopify’s third annual partner and developer conference hosted May 7 to 9 in Toronto, Ontario.

Having helped thousands of high-volume businesses scale across borders, we’re using those insights to deliver the building blocks so you can reach new channels and markets with ease.

The platform investments we’re making and capabilities we’re building will create value for you in three ways:

1. Simplify Business Management

We’re building the following solutions to give you centralized management of inventory and locations, operational automation, and advanced targeting capabilities engineered to reduce the operational complexities associated with expanding rapidly so you can scale faster and more efficiently.

Connectors for Shopify Flow

We’re proud to announce that Shopify Flow, an automation platform that offloads workflows in just a few clicks, can now harness the power of automation to bring together apps and technologies you use every day through connectors.

These connectors — powered by automation — link your business tools with each other, and Shopify. With Flow acting as the connective tissue between your external systems and storefront, you can automate many of the tasks you’ve currently been doing manually or patching together with custom code and third-party solutions.

Workflows can now start from an event in an app installed on your store, and end by taking action in another. Starting today, you can sign up for early access to connectors for Shopify Flow through our public beta. This is just the start for connectors - we’re teaming up with our partners to bring more connectors to Flow in the coming months.

Not only will Flow’s ability to fill the gaps between systems give you the control over your business you desire, but it will also position you to coordinate how your systems work together and automate those processes which will help you in three crucial ways:

Simplify Business Workflows

Connectors can build bridges between business tools that previously couldn’t easily be linked. Find new ways for your apps to work together, saving you time.

Focus on Growth

Create workflows that span across apps and services in minutes. Now you can experiment behind the scenes without spending time and money on third-party solutions or development resources.

Get More Out of Your Apps

Level up your apps by connecting them to Flow’s automation platform. Workflows can now start and end from any combination of events and actions within Shopify or your connected apps.

“By applying unique combinations of triggers, conditions, and actions developed for Shopify Flow, merchants can experiment with thousands of innovative ways of using LoyaltyLion and other partners to maximize customer engagement and retention.”

Locations

With our new Locations solution, Shopify Plus merchants can scale faster with location-aware intelligence and tools designed to give them the visibility they need to optimize inventory and fulfillment decisions in real-time.

Scale Faster & Lift Profitability Simultaneously

With Shopify’s Locations, you’ll now be able to see and manage all of your inventory locations from one place. Not only does a centralized management of inventory and locations allow you to operate more efficiently and reduce your overhead, it also positions you to start selling faster.

With just a few clicks, you can add new locations, update inventory at multiple locations, and strategically plan your location’s inventory assortment to optimize fulfillment.

Real-Time Monitoring From a Central Hub

The centralized reporting will position you to better understand how inventory locations are being utilized with regard to inventory, orders, products, and shipping, and make adjustments to optimize efficiency and performance.

Integrate Deeply into a Location-Aware Ecosystem

We built Locations to easily integrate with the applications on which you rely to bring additional functionality for multi-location to POS. Brands that integrate deeply in this manner will enjoy a seamless experience across key backend business operations by integrating directly with third-party custom fulfillment services, 3PLs, and dropshipping applications to fulfill orders.

Fraud Protect for Shopify Payments

As you scale, fraudulent chargebacks erode profit margins, and trying to prevent them with manual reviews is time-consuming and inefficient.

Assessing for risk requires the right tools and experience to make decisions that will help save valuable time and money.

Fraud Protect for Shopify Payments takes the guesswork out of fraudulent chargebacks by automatically protecting your orders. Move confidently into new markets and take back the time spent manually reviewing orders.

With Fraud Protect for Shopify Payments:

Optimize to save time: Most orders are automatically protected so you no longer have to review them

Expand with confidence: If you get a chargeback due to fraud on a protected order, Shopify automatically issues a refund and handles the dispute

Focus on growth: You keep the money from each order you make

Fraud Protect for Shopify Payments is easy to set up. When it’s available, you'll be just a few clicks away from making chargebacks due to fraud a thing of the past. Most importantly, fraud will no longer be a cost of doing business.

Marketing Simplification

We’re creating an integrated marketing section directly within your Shopify Plus admin so later this year you can easily create digital marketing campaigns that put your brand and products in front of the right buyers and easily measure and compare campaign effectiveness.

Whether you’re running your own campaigns or delegating that to a partner, digital marketing is full of complex platforms that can take hours to understand. It’s why Shopify has simplified your marketing tools and paired them with actionable insights that help you optimize your marketing activities or better monitor partner agency performance.

In just a few clicks, the marketing section positions you to better understand your customers and optimize your campaigns in three ways:

Save Time

With this centralized section housed within Shopify, you’ll be able to create digital marketing campaigns faster and more efficiently than ever before, using all the marketing apps you’ve come to rely on. That means email campaigns, social media posts, referral campaigns, discount banners, paid ad campaigns and more, all in one place.

Gain Insight & Optimize

Integrating your marketing applications in on place positions you to easily compare detailed campaign results across marketing channels in one location so you can learn more easily and improve your campaigns over time.

Personalized Recommendations

Shopify’s intelligent marketing recommendations help you take the right actions to target the right audience, based on your unique products and store.

The Shopify marketing section scheduled to launch later this summer, is a one-stop-shop designed to help you market your brand more efficiently and effectively.

2. Expand Your Reach

Innovate for growth by experimenting with the solutions required to navigate new channels, markets and customer segments all on a global scale.

Multi-Currency for Shopify Payments

With Shopify Payment’s multi-currency you will be able to grow globally by acting locally. Importantly, the new multi-currency will allow merchants to start with a global mindset by easily selling in local currencies and settling in their preferred currency.

In addition to managing it all in one place, Shopify’s multi-currency positions brands to offer customer-friendly international storefronts and checkout experiences. Powered by Shopify Payments, multi-currency helps merchants experiment and expand quickly adding or removing local currencies as markets change.

Offer your customers automatic storefront currency capabilities with powerful built-in geolocation functionality that will allow you to show customers local currency prices based on current foreign exchange rates that are rounded so buyer’s see relevant prices — for instance .95 or .99 rather than a less familiar price — and for stability.

From product creation to payout reconciliation, Shopify’s multi-currency provides a consistent experience so merchants can sell internationally with confidence.

“From product creation to payout reconciliation, merchants will see the proper currency presented across Shopify so they don't need to worry about reporting inconsistencies or inaccuracies.”

Multi-currency launches this Fall starting with businesses on Shopify Plus that are using Shopify Payments. It will start by supporting selling in the following currencies: AUD, EUR, JPY, SGD, USD, CAD, HKD, NZD, and GBP.

Local Payment Methods for Shopify Payments

Local Payment Methods will soon allow Shopify Payments’ merchants to offer international customers the local payment method with which they are accustomed to checking out.

With local payment methods, you’ll be able to offer a hyperlocal customer experience that builds trust with international customers and lifts checkout conversion rates.

Intimately understanding how customers in new markets like to pay for the items they purchase is crucial when expanding internationally. For instance, while credit cards are wildly popular in North America, they’re not used nearly as much by online shoppers elsewhere:

In Germany, credit cards make up just 22% of online transactions, and payments from bank accounts make up more than 40% of spending

In the Netherlands, iDEAL, a direct banking app that touches all the major banks, represents more than half of all online spending.

Payment methods are an intrinsic part of a country’s culture. To scale internationally you must offer your customers the payment methods they prefer. It’s why we’re excited to announce that this year, we’re bringing Local Payment Methods to Shopify Payments so you can offer your customers optionality beyond credit.

The focus right now is on extending the most popular payments methods to all Shopify Payments customers. Ultimately, we’re going to simplify the complexity of global payments so that merchants can sell more while spending less time trying to navigate this complex landscape.

When we launch local payment methods, you’ll be positioned to increase global sales by allowing your buyers to pay in a way they are accustomed to and trust:

Accept new local payment methods directly via Shopify Payments in just a few clicks in the following countries where Shopify Payments is live: United States, Puerto Rico, Canada, the United Kingdom, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand, Hong Kong, and Singapore.

Automatically surface the best payment method based on a customer’s location

Increase international conversion rates and easily turn specific payment methods on or off based on strategy or market changes

Look for updates as we prepare to launch local payment methods soon.

Seamless Retail Selling

Thriving merchants with a global multichannel growth strategy understand that seamlessly blurring the lines between the digital and physical worlds is crucial to running a business in-person.

The future of commerce includes succeeding in retail which means merchants must offer a customer experience that makes in-person commerce less transactional and more human.

A Unite 2018, Shopify announced helping merchants succeed in selling and promoting their brands offline is a priority on which we are narrowly focused.

Over the course of the year, Shopify will roll out a suite of solutions and tools designed to support retail store businesses and enable meaningful in-person customer experiences and selling in-person including:

Shopify Tap & Chip Reader: A contactless reader that enables you to run your business from any device and offer a seamless secure (PCI-compliant) experience that is synced with your store

Tipping: Shopify POS will be equipped with tipping functionality that allows customers to generously reward you and your employees for in-person service you provide

Returns and Exchanges for Shopify POS: offer exchanges and refunds regardless of whether a customer bought online or in-store, upsell with rich company functionality, build trust with meaningful post-purchase interactions

These are just a few of the exciting improvements we’ve made to up your retail game. Head to our retail blog for the full list of products & features announced.

Accelerate Time to Value

Experiment with new ways to drive conversions, orders, and value.

BOGO & Quantity Discounts

Increasing average order value (AOV) is one way some of the most successful Shopify Plus merchants grow faster. Offering incentives that convince customers to add additional items to their carts without sacrificing profitability is crucial to scaling fast.

Starting this week, we’re releasing new discount code functionality so you can easily experiment with creative incentives to attract new customers and reward loyal ones.

Shopify Scripts will continue to offer frictionless, automated promotions and checkout experiences (with no discount code required), and is the only way to offer customized shipping and payment methods based on a customer or cart.

Shopify now natively offers Buy X get Y discount code creations that allows you to grow sales and boost profitability by experimenting with powerful discount combinations, such as:

Buy X, get a second product or collection for free, or % discount: Buy 1 shoe, get socks 50% off

Specify single or multiple products or collections for X and Y: Buy any product, get 50% off shirts and pants

Likewise, quantity discounts have now been built into Shopify so you can offer discounts based on the number of items purchased or amount spent. Some examples include:

Offer a % discount based on quantity or cart value: Buy 2 or more socks, get 20% off

Offer $ discounts based on quantity or cart value: Spend $100 or more, get $25 off

Offer free shipping based on quantity or cart value: Free shipping when you buy 3 or more products

Not only can varying the types of promotions you offer help you fine tune mix and profitability, but new discount promotions can surprise customers, create a “treasure hunting” like shopping experience, and give them a reason to return. As always, you can still limit customer eligibility to specific customers or groups and set usage limits on each discount code.

Ready to get started building the discounts you’ve always wanted to offer?

Dynamic Checkout

We’ve expedited the checkout process so merchants can now increase conversions with Dynamic Checkout, an accelerated checkout flow that offers your store’s shoppers the ability to quickly checkout directly on a product page using their preferred payment method or wallet.

Instead of requiring customers to click “add to cart” to begin the traditional multi-step checkout process, dynamic checkout buttons now allow your customers to skip the process and check out directly while shopping.

While customers will still have the option to checkout traditionally and add additional items to their carts, Dynamic Checkout gives shoppers an opportunity to leapfrog the cart and checkout without leaving the product page they’re browsing.

Customers can checkout with Shopify Pay or another familiar accelerated checkout method. Not only do dynamic checkout buttons speed up the payment process but they also offer customers peace of mind by allowing them to use payment methods they trust.

As you’ve scaled, you’ve likely realized how difficult it can be to identify the optimal point to capture purchase intent. Doing so can be even more challenging if you’re only experimenting with a traditional checkout flow with which shoppers have become accustomed.

Today, you can ask for the sale immediately and completely avoid the traditional checkout flow.

Besides removing the number of steps it takes to checkout, Dynamic Checkout positions you to capture purchase intent much sooner while simultaneously personalizing the checkout experience by serving up a customer’s preferred payment method.

You can offer customers branded and unbranded dynamic checkout buttons:

Unbranded buttons offer a “Buy Now” CTA and take customers directly to the checkout to complete the payment process

Branded buttons offer a “Buy With [Payment Method]” and show the logo for third-party accelerated checkout methods like Google Pay, Apple Pay, or PayPal

Your Future At Scale

With fewer technical barriers to entry the world of commerce will become increasingly competitive- especially for merchants scaling globally who’ll encounter some of the biggest hurdles.

At Unite 2018 we made it clear that those are the complexities we are narrowly focused on solving for you.

You can have confidence knowing that when you encounter a complexity that impacts your ability to sell anywhere, we’re using that feedback and experience to inform our product and platform development decisions. We’re committed to delivering the key building blocks for high growth so you can continue to focus on the meaningful as you scale your business and never have to worry that your platform will hold you back.

This is exactly how Shopify Plus is building new products for high growth merchants. Use them to simplify, automate, and accelerate your global growth initiatives.